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8 Features Unique to Opera Browser

Opera can’t seem to get a break. They get to make all these browser innovations and come up with original ideas and still sits at the bottom of the barrel in browser usage stats. In some ways Opera browser is a lot like Linux; they are really good (some could argue that they are the best) at what they do but no one seems to know enough to even give it a fair shot. I was also guilty in this, but I am also not a normal browser user as I switch back and forth from one browser to another on different platform to check out and test drive what new features and innovations are going on in the browser market.

Having used all major browser (IE, Chrome, FF, Opera) for extended time, I can tell you that modern browsers has reached a stage where you can hardly distinguish one another when it comes to performance and in recent case they even look and work a lot similar with minimalistic UI and the way tabs functions. However, one browser that really stands out is Opera, not only does it come with a set of features that are unique with Opera, it also has all the goodies you come to expect from other more widely used browsers out there. Don’t get me wrong, these unique features are also available on other browsers as a second thought, in the form of extensions. But most of us who are heavy users of browser add-ons or extensions know very well what extensions can do to browser performance. As a matter of fact, even if you don’t take extensions into consideration and just look at memory usage of top 4 browsers you will still find opera to be more responsive and better manager of memory with all the added built-in features.

Lets look at some of the top built-in Opera Browser features only available on Opera (pre-installed):

1) Web Page Preview on Tabs:

Opera lets you see the preview of a webpage loaded on a tab by hovering your mouse on the tab without you having to switch to the tab to see it.

2) Torrent Downloading:

3) Opera Mail:

It is possible to manage all your emails account with built-in Opera email client.

4) A Built-in RSS Reader:

A rss reader available within the mail client.

5) Opera Notes:

A built-in note manager that will replace most of your Evernote usage.

6) Mouse gestures:

Mouse gestures lets you automate common browser actions by the manner you move your mouse. With Opera its not only built-in to the browser but was also the first browser to ever have this feature. Other browser have this option only through third party plugin and I have used them and they don’t feel as polished as it is on Opera.

7) Reload page every x minutes:

Opera has a feature where it lets you configure a certain webpage to reload every few seconds or minutes. This can be useful to see updates on certain sites that doesn’t automatically update itself.

8) Clone Tab:

In some situation you want to to back to the previous link but also want keep the current website open. Without going through elaborate tasks, on Opera you could just right click and “clone Tab” to duplicate your current tab and go about doing your business.

If you know any interesting Opera built-in feature that I might have missed, feel free to share on the comments.

“Clone tab” is not unique to Opera, you can duplicate tabs in chrome too.

anexoticllama

Apparently, you can do the same in IE.

hatemale

There are way more functions unique to vanilla Opera. Which is why I’m dumbstruck, wondering how ‘tab previews’ got in there O_O

ZeD

I don’t get the “clone tab” feature… if you want to “open the previous element of the history in a new tab” why don’t you middle- or ctrl-click on the “back” button? it works in firefox and I find it super-intuitive, ’cause ctlr-click simply means “open *everything you click on* in a new tab”

http://lucb1e.com/ Lucb1e

After using Firefox religiously for years, I still can’t understand why not all browsers come with a built-in RSS reader. Yay for Opera!

hatemale

Speaking as one who uses RSS a lot, but not with the browser, my indifference, if I may use that word, is because I seriously abuse my browsers, computers and resources. That’s just tabs, multi browsers open, a lot of bookmarks in Firefox from the Xmarks and Delicious days circa 2004 (I use Pocket, the app formerly known as Read it Later now. Well, the button to save to it at least.), bandwidth, music, IDE’s and so on.

I think importing my RSS as a local db will be the catalyst for this laptop finally igniting

hatemale

Where is Opera-flavoured MHT(ML) in the list?! I find it absolutely unparallelled for dev work, together with Dragonfly. Also… the built in on the fly view changing thing (mobile, tablet, wristwatch etc.).

Bonus: built-in taskbar and panels unlimited customizing. No other browser-developer is that brave to give the public that much power out the box

Stanik

I really like the ability to search from the address bar. Google search is default,
but you can search using Bing by typing:

b opera browser features

or duckduckgo:

d opera browser features

or you can search in amazon:

z graphics programming black book

and of course you can customize those.

Warer

I used to use Opera but the latest versions are very slow, just check the last lifehacker benchmarks, Opera is the slower one, it used to be in pair with chrome and even better.

The rss reader is useful, but it needs cloud sync, if it wasn’t for this I would use it over google reader.